5 Tips To Keep Your Home And Family Safe

5 Tips To Keep Your Home And Family Safe

The list of what every parent should know keeps growing as your awareness of your responsibility to your immediate family and your little world expands each year. Sometimes, it’s a shift in your thinking – like reading an article about the importance of reading a bedtime story to your children because it stimulates the development of their brain’s neuronets. At other times, it’s taking practical steps to apply simple backyard safety tips like inspecting playground equipment and adding a safety fence around the pool with a self-locking gate to keep kids from swimming without adult supervision.

Let’s take a closer look at some other things you can put on your list that will keep your family safe when they are at home–things that need to be done both inside the house and outside in the yard.

Pest control.

Pests are usually just a nuisance, but sometimes pests like wasps, hornet, bees and poisonous spiders can be dangerous. Usually, pests are in the yard, but sometimes they sneak into the house, where it is warm and there is plenty of food. The best way to deal with pests is to have a contract with a reputable company like Joshua’s Pest Control to keep pests from your home and yard. Prevention is the best policy because once pests begin to breed, they can be hard to get rid of. Mice, for example, hide in small places that are often hard to find.

Alarm system monitoring.

An alarm system monitoring for your home is one of the best ways to reduce the incidents of burglary or intrusion. While it’s possible to set up a home security system by yourself, you will probably be better off using a home security company to set everything up for you. Not only will you be able to get immediate help because your house is being monitored, but you will also get the latest security technology to protect your home. For instance, an app on your smartphone can allow you to access the cameras placed inside your house even when you’re far from home. If you are on vacation, this app can turn the lights on or off inside the house, giving people in the neighborhood the impression that someone is at home.

Babysitters

When you let a stranger into your home, how do you know your children aren’t being mistreated, bullied, or abused? Usually, you pick a babysitter based on recommendations or running a background check. However, the recommendation might not be accurate and if the babysitter is a teenager, a background check is unlikely to reveal any information about their past behavior.

Some of the best ways to be selective about baby sitters is to hire someone you know well and ask your children about their experience on a regular basis. If you have monitored security, you will have cameras in place, so you can do random viewing on your smart phone to check up on them.

Good lighting.

While lighting is something we often take for granted, poor lighting can be a problem, especially if you have elderly family members who might have an accident if they can’t see where they are going. Increasing the number of light fixtures and lighting up dark corners is a simple way to make sure your house is safe for somebody who finds difficulty in getting around the house.

Online safety.

Sometimes danger can come from unexpected places. While you are probably aware of the need for antivirus software, firewalls, the use of alphanumeric passwords, and other ways of protecting your computers, an attack can also come from phishing scams and cyber-bullying on social media.

Educating family members about phishing scams can prevent them from responding to suspicious emails and monitoring your children’s social media pages can help prevent them from being victimized online.

While many parents are reluctant to monitor their children’s online behavior, feeling that this encroaches on their privacy and disrupts trust, there is a huge risk in not monitoring your child’s online behavior. According to an article in Parenting about social media, “Social networking is on the rise, and the study [The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) ] found that 22 percent of teenagers log onto their favorite social media sites more than 10 times a day, and that 75 percent own cell phones. This level of engagement online increases the risks of cyberbullying, “Facebook depression” (a new phenomenon where “de-friending” and online bullying lead to symptoms of depression), exposure to inappropriate content, and sexting.”

Taking these five steps will go a long way in making your home safer for your family.

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